Modern Love and Death

I heard that you and your band sold your angular guitars and bought synthesizers. Philadelphia-based quartet Hail Social trade the post-post-punk herky-jerky of their self-titled 2005 Polyvinyl debut for this year's self-released sophomore effort, Modern Love and Death, moving toward synth-pop without giving up the first album's dancefloor aspirations and plentiful hooks. The group seem to have lost some of their personality in the exchange.

Classics Dept. in-joke moniker aside, Hail Social have been slickly populist since the beginning. That's part of their appeal, but the watered-down vibe too often accompanying such boomer-friendly accessibility is also the band's biggest stumbling block. On Modern Love and Death, the shadow of radio nostalgia hanging over Hail Social's Franz Ferdinand-skinny, Duran Duran-humongoid debut ("Radio, radio," singer Dayve Hawk proclaimed) recurs both sonically and lyrically. "All night, we can listen to the radio," Hawk suggests on vocoder-enhanced "All Night" over romantically gooey synths that could've been eBayed from fellow Philadelphians Hall & Oates. A track later, the title number goes in for funky guitar licks and four-on-the-floor beats (too clean to be Shitdisco, not stark-raving enough for nu-rave) as Hawk imagines "no more songs, no more favorites." Could this be love? "It felt a little more vacant," Hawk muses in his polished tenor.

At times Modern Love & Death reaches radio-appropriate catchiness, but that doesn't mean the songs are necessarily memorable. Nothing here tops opener "Annabelle", with galloping drum programming and disco hi-hat decorating Hawk's sentimental reminiscence about a neighborhood bad girl. "Hell belongs to us," he quips, but he's just as likely to repeat such standard-issue pop pleasantries as "You're the only girl that I will ever love." Where a group like Hot Chip would explore robot-of-love sonics and give even a song about (say) a "Boy from School" a distinctive angle, Hail Social's tunes sound like they could've been played at any 80s-themed party in the past five years. "I don't know if I can live without you," Hawk worries on "Heaven", another standout in terms of tunefulness, if not aesthetic or, um, lyrics.

Right, right, not everything people dance to needs to be Dostoevsky, let alone LCD Soundsystem, but Hail Social's lack of unique characteristics becomes a bigger bummer on the second half of Modern Love and Death. Y'all don't want this party to fizzle out early, right? "One U Love" blips and bleeps into rapidfire verses, but it's pretty much the tonight-let's-be-lovers rule that makes exceptions like Natasha Bedingfield's "(I Wanna Have Your) Babies" so refreshing. Then again, "The Strangest Things" lurches into an insistent "Blue Monday"-like bass line, but listen to the two tracks side by side and the differences between New Order's trailblazing genius and Hail Social's shiny, retro adequacy should be quickly apparent. Hail Social may be glad to give the people what they want, but they don't seem to know what people really want.